I think I fried my PowerMac 9500... Shoot!!! And I was really liking that machine too!
Ah well, looks like I'm gonna have to salvage the parts for my 7200/90. I'll give my 7200 some more RAM, another hard drive, and a video card for a second monitor. Not a bad salvage considering I only paid $25 for the 9500.
Here's the gory details:
I pulled the 9500's CPU card out and inserted a 200MHz 604e card that I pulled from a 7300. I started the machine up and got nothing. The 9500 wouldn't even attempt to access the drives.
I thought that maybe I hadn't seated something completely, so I pulled all of the DIMM's and reseated them, reseated the video card, reseated the CPU card, and reseated all of the cables, etc. Started it up and... Nothing!
I pressed the Cuda switch and attempted a boot... Nothing!
I pulled the 604e CPU card out and put the old 604/150 card back in, powered it up and... Nothing!
Put the 604e card back in the 7300, booted it up and... The 7300 boots fine.
So, my 9500 that wouldn't boot Mac OS 9.1 will now boot nothing!
Ah well, at least I killed a couple of hours playing. Looks like I'm gonna have to get my 7200 back online.
Did you hit the CUDA after reinstalling the original CPU?
Yeah, I tried everything... But it died right there on the operating table... Telling the family, that's the part that I hate the most. It's always very emotional.
It's not easy losing a loved one!
But I'm only a doctor, not God! I did my best but this 9500's time had come. Thankfully, the 9500 had signed an organ donor card... So a small piece of the 9500 will live on in another Mac.
Please, a moment of silence and a prayer for the departed one...
I had almost the exact same thing happen. I swapped CPU cards in a PCI Power Mac, and it wouldn't start with the new CPU card - when I tried to turn it on, all I'd get was a little click, plus a momentary flickering of the front power light. Dead as a doornail.
I put the original CPU back in, did multiple CUDA resets, swapped RAM, unpugged the machine, removed the PRAM battery for a minute, did the Apple Service Manual-prescribed motherboard reset procedure - nothing worked.
Finally I unplugged the machine, removed the motherboard, removed the CPU card and all the RAM, and set all the pieces aside. I must've let it sit for several weeks.
Then I put everything back together and it came back to life, working perfectly!
All I can figure out is that the logic board gets into a state where it needs to be reset, and the only truly effective way to do it is to let the mobo sit, with no AC, no PSU hookup, and no PRAM battery.
I very much doubt it has to sit for weeks as mine did - I imagine overnight would be fine.
Good luck!
Matt
Yeah but I'd be willing to bet that yours didn't arc and turn white plastic brown... Did it?
It's fried! The arc's would indicate a short somewhere. It's toast!
Nothing left to do but butter it up and slide it in a cubby hole somewhere until the time comes to pull it out play with it some more...
I'm not overly concerned about it. Hell, for the $25 that it cost me, I couldn't have gotten a 2GB SCSI drive, a spare 4x CDROM drive, 80MB of RAM, and a video card any cheaper. Besides, I now have an extra internal floppy drive, a CPU card that may still work in another 9500, and a case that is in relatively good shape.
If I ever get another 9500 that's in pretty rough shape, I'm all set!
But if you insist, I will give it another go... But I don't think that anything is gonna happen... Except, maybe, a few more electrical arcs.
I figure the SCSI CDROM will come in handy for my beige G3. I could pull the IDE CDROM out, put the SCSI one in and have a second IDE hard drive in there. My G3 is of the vintage that it does not support master/slave drives on the same bus.
Um, no, mine didn't do that. Didn't realize you were being literal when you said yours was Toast!
So you're right. But you're also right about all the parts - they're worth more than $25 combined. So at least that's something.
Best,
Matt
I had an 8500 that exhibited similar problems and I found removing the PRAM battery, power cords and holding the CUDA reset for over 30 seconds gave the best results. I also found that removing and reseating the RAM SIMMS before reseting the motherboard carried some success. These remedies are of course observed corrections, I can't explain exactly why this may work over other procedures. Perhaps there is enough charge in the MB capacitors to maintain the corrupt settings. Is there any Mac techs that could shed some light?
The Mac's are a peculiar breed. In my experience, I've found that some Mac models will endure just about anything short of total damnation, while others are the most temperamental SOB's to have ever graced the Earth's surface. It's whacky. Some Mac's can be beaten, battered, and tossed about, and they still work... First time, everytime. Then you'll run across this particular Mac model that will whine and complain about just about everything, refusing to do anything until it gets just the right amount of TLC.
Who says that Mac's don't have personality? It's alive!!!
Ah well, it's all part of the allure of the Macintosh.